mobile phones

Drawing from a wide range of recent literature, this paper identifies five main stories that come together at many points in the literature: universal access, economic and social services, openness, human development, and innovation. It is worth underlining that this article is mostly about mobile phone access and use, as this is the dominant story of the last decade for people in the bottom or base of the pyramid. This is not to deny the importance of broadband, Internet connection, or computers and devices with computing power much greater than that of mobiles.

Mobile applications in general and mobile applications for agricultural and rural development (m-ARD apps) in particular hold significant potential for advancing development. Though there have been many studies on the mobile revolution, there is a lack of systematic trend analyses, in-depth case studies, and assessments of experiences with m-ARD apps in developing countries. Thus this report examines their development impact, ecosystems, and business models to provide an analytical framework for policymakers and development practitioners.

Despite the political turmoil that had swept up the region over the past two years, the Arab world continued to make significant progress in the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) in 2011, taking big strides towards enhancing ICT infrastructure and performance. Driven by the GCC's remarkable mobile penetration figures, mobile phone subscriptions in the Arab world nearly matched the region's population – to reach 346 million as of end 2011.

Despite the increasing importance of mobile devices in education, the essential features of these devices for ubiquitous learning have not been empirically addressed. This study empirically investigated the necessary conditions for using mobile devices as an educational tool for ubiquitous learning in higher education by a conjoint method. The results show that respondents want to use Window-based large-screen devices for their educational purposes; thus, current tablet PCs might not be suitable in terms of screen size and type of platform.

The Asian Development Bank has been part of searching for better development solutions and innovative approaches using ICT and experiencing the challenges of realities in implementation.This paper selectively takes stock of ADB initiatives across sectors, countries, and regions to share their experiences.

In the fall of 2011, Danida commissioned a study with the objective of examining strategic opportunities for using ICT for promoting governance and democratization efforts within development assistance; and exploring opportunities for ICT in the present Danish portfolio of development programs and within the vision of the Strategy for Danish Development Cooperation. The study touches on a range of ICT technologies but its focus is the use of mobile phones, including voice calls, SMS Text, mobile internet, and social media.

This joint effort draws on the wealth of existing expertise across numerous organizations and previous research to codify a series of best conduct practices for the use of SMS in disaster response. This guideline document is a collaborative work in progress and therefore neither fully comprehensive nor entirely complete. This effort focuses exclusively on “natural” disasters and thus currently excludes reference to political crises and complex humanitarian emergencies.

Liberia is a country emerging from years of protracted and devastating civil conflict. Left without any fixed-line telephone infrastructure, it relies solely on the mobile phone for telephony. This study investigates the usage of mobile phones in this immediate post-conflict setting. In particular, it adopts the uses and gratifications approach to media research, giving focus to both instrumental and intrinsic motivations for use. 85 mobile phone users were surveyed and experts from two major service providers and the industry regulator were interviewed.

The objective of this study is to provide an overview of the current trend in m-Agri Apps development and to answer the question of how to improve information provisioning to smallholder farmers. It also aims to translate this knowledge into success factors, weaknesses, and opportunities for global cooperation and explore ways to share expertise on entrepreneurship in the domain of agro, food and ICT, and to identify possibilities to catalyse the development of mobile applications in smallholder agriculture.

To successfully use mobile phones to aid development efforts, understanding the impact of the social structure on mobile phone adoption, uses, perceived impacts, and reinvention of uses is invaluable. Interviews were conducted with 90 mobile phone-owning holders of small- to medium-sized farms—50 women and 40 men—actively involved in agricultural development-based farm groups in Kamuli District, Uganda. Respondents indicated use of the mobile phone for coordinating access to agricultural inputs, market information, to monitor ªnancial transactions, and to consult with agricultural experts.